California became the home to the Aedes aegypti mosquito about a decade ago. Since then, it can be found from the Mexican border all the way to the northern California border with Oregon. It’s been found in 200 cities spread across 22 California counties. Its arrival was not welcome, however.
Author: Devon Herrick
Medicare Drug Plan Spending Growth to Double
A report published in Health Affairs estimates that Medicare Part D spending will rapidly increase in the coming years. The reasons are both good news and bad news. Basically, new drugs in the pipeline and an increasing array of specialty drugs will drive spending growth. From 2009 to 2018 spending on Medicare Part D drugs increased about…
Fight Childhood Obesity by Making School Lunches Less Appetizing
About 30 million school kids qualify for free or low-cost school lunches through the National School Lunch Program. A dozen years ago a federal law tightened school lunch nutritional requirements with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The federal law hoped to increase school kids intake of vegetables, fruits, fiber, grains and unsweetened beverages. The federal initiative was in response to findings that children who got free lunches were gaining more weight than higher income children not in the program. Prior to the tightened federal standards, low-income children enrolled in the school lunch program were more likely to have a body mass index closer to the obesity threshold than their higher-income peers. Rather than alleviate hunger, there was concern that the school lunch program was contributing to childhood obesity. According to the CDC, 21% of kids age 6 to 11 are obese, while 17% of adolescents age 12 to 19 are obese. Nearly 10% have severe obesity.
Drug Maker’s Copay Assistance Ended Up in Drug Plans’ Pockets
A while back I wrote about drug company copay assistance programs. The purpose of these is to entice patients to use higher-cost brand drugs by blunting health plan incentives for enrollees to choose lower-cost drug options.